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Nikki Haley got her 14-year-old daughter a job working for the state — a thirty hour a week job that is paid for with taxpayer money. The State Newspaper and Charlotte Observer reported this online and the governor’s office immediately made them take the story down. Did you know that the governor could do that?

There are some, including Nikki Haley herself, who say that the children of politicians should be off-limits. There are others who say that Nikki Haley has gotten her husband a $65,000 state job with benefits, her brother-in-law a state job at MUSC, and her chief-of-staff’s wife a $50,000 part-time state job and her forcing others to hire her family should be the subject of scrutiny. Or at least, these reporters thought it was news until they got a phone call telling them to get rid of it. According to the Free Times:

Both papers apparently published the story before getting the memo that it had been spiked. That’s a news industry term for when a reporter’s story is killed by editors or publishers, and can sometimes come from a politician, corporation or outside entity putting pressure on a news organization to yank a piece it is planning to run.

The governor contacted officials at The State and the paper apparently agreed to kill it, but the story was still in McClatchy’s system, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. McClatchy owns The State and cross-publishes stories that appear in the Capital City daily in other out-of-town content-sharing papers.

The story was up long enough for others to see the story and see that it had been taken down. Which led to this bit of Sarah Palin-esque hysteria from the governor, who wants to turn it into a story of the Mama Grizzly whose children have been attacked by reporters trying to figure out if Governor Haley, not her daughter, has broken any laws.

Scrutiny of me comes with the territory of being governor. I expect it. But it’s a sad day for journalism in South Carolina when The State newspaper goes after my 14 year old daughter. Public officials have a right to expect that their minor children are off limits from political opponents and even from biased media outlets like The State. Its disgusting. Shame on them.

There were some gems in the comments section though.

Wondering if the 300+ posters above actually read the article or can comprehend it??
It wasn’t about the daughter… it was about the daughter getting a job at a store run by a cabinet under DIRECT control of the Gov… No job openings were posted.. People took a cut in hours to accommodate the new employees hours…
Its about a total abuse of power by Gov. Nikki. Jeremy Mitchum

I’m glad to see Nikky Haley has found her FOURTEEN year old daughter a 30 hour a week job that is payed for with taxpayer money. With all the tax payer money Haley seems to wanna save, cutting important programs such as ones to help people with aids and ones for rape survivors (that’s a “distraction”) it seems she wouldn’t make taxpayers pay her daughters paychecks. Jimmy Dowling

I do not understand this article as an attack on your daughter. It’s an attack against you and the way you have used your office to impose nepotism on various agencies, which when I worked for the state was definitively spelled out as a big NO-NO. Shame on you again Gov Haley for using an old political trick for twisting words to lend sympathy to your out of bounds actions. BTW, you are the politician screaming ‘foul’ and trying to make your own child the object of scorn here. Shame on you again. Pat Lee-Bosworth

You got your daughter a state job and expected no backlash? That’s like calling Papa John’s not not expecting a pizza. Vic Scaricamazza

Is it a story? Not a big one in the scheme of things, less of a story than the 10% unemployment rate in the state, less of a story than Nikki Haley vetoing important spending. But it’s also part of those stories. And part of a new story, the story of how the governor of South Carolina controls the media a little more than I am comfortable with. Remember, even though the Republican governor can control what the paper publishes, the mainstream media is controlled by liberals.

Sorry I’ve been quiet a while, crazy couple of weeks. I went to SC this weekend. I’m trying to put together a budget and business proposal for Bible Con, with plans to shoot it in SC. I think it can be done on a low enough budget that raising the money myself is feasible. I don’t know that I’ve described the story here, so have my logline:

Bible Con — Comic Con for Christians — goes straight to hell when Jesus and Mary Magdalene fall in love, the keynote speaker turns out to be an atheist, and the event is besieged by DaVinci Code fans.

It’s Best in Show meets The Life of Brian.

Nicholl Semi-Finalist, Movie Script Contest Finalist

I’m trying to do a rewrite now, but the drama in my life is making it difficult to concentrate on. I know too many unemployed people is basically what the deal is. One of my roommates is having to give up on LA and drive back home, selling all of her possessions to afford the trip. My other roommate is also unemployed, but theoretically has something coming up. Obviously, not a happy situation. And my closest friends can’t find jobs either.

And as much as I hate logging, and as much as it doesn’t pay me enough to live off of, I guess at least it’s something. Admittedly, the idea of getting my own project off the ground is probably all that’s standing between me and the cratering depression my current economic state brings on.

I’ve gotten a couple more requests that I haven’t kept up on posting. Maybe I’ll do that at some point.